Fatherhood: A Comprehensive Guide to Birth, Budgeting, Finding Flow, and Becoming a Happy Parent

By Fatherly

Becoming a parent can be daunting . . . terrifying, in fact.

This is especially true for dads. Where’s the road map? Well, you’re looking at it. This book from the editors of Fatherly, the largest digital brand for dads, is a one-stop source for fathers-to-be, empowering them to be the best parent they can be--with both confidence and joy.

New fathers grapple with both practical and existential questions: Is my baby supposed to do that? How do I afford to make my family thrive? How does swaddling work again? Who am I, and what kind of dad will I become?

Fatherhood is here to answer all of these questions and more.

This comprehensive guide walks fathers through everything they need to know--practically, emotionally, and philosophically--over the course of the first year of a baby’s life.

The content is divided by developmental stage:

• Pregnancy up to birth
• Infancy (the first 500 days)
• Toddlerhood (days 500 to 1,000)

By offering data, anecdotes, and expert-driven analysis, the authors prep dads for what’s ahead, letting them know they’re not alone on their journey.

Fatherhood is the book every father and father-to-be needs.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Thomas Nelson
• Release date: Nov 9, 2021
• ISBN: 9780785237839

Fatherly

Fatherly is the leading media brand for dads. Created to empower men to raise great kids and lead more fulfilling adult lives, Fatherly reaches over 100 million readers annually and produces award-winning podcasts, video series, events, and books. Committed to original reporting and expert advice, Fatherly represents a new kind of parenting publication for a new kind of parent interested in data, hard-won insights, and making the most out of a profoundly rewarding stage of life.  

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Introduction

The Known Unknown

Your father knew nothing. Well, next to nothing—at least, next to nothing when it came to the likely effect he would have on you or your life. At most, when you were born, he had an inkling of what his presence and participation could offer. You inherited that same inkling. You’re considering it now, an undistinguished mass like an uncut diamond. Your sense is that you can make something priceless of it, but even the first cut requires a decision you might not be ready for. After all, you don’t know the first thing about diamond cutting.

Maybe your father loved you, maybe he didn’t. Whether he was present or absent, understanding or harsh, good or bad in your estimation, he was most likely unaware of what he held—because there was nobody to teach him to shape it. Like others before him, he progressed through the experience of fatherhood, trying to refine the raw white stone and trying to make it shine. Someone just needed to help him find the correct angles.

Since 1950, the US government has spent roughly $600 billion on NASA programs and nearly $10 billion collecting data on mothers; the $15 million in change it found between the couch cushions went to research related to fatherhood. But the bulk of that research has been conducted in just the last decade. Which is all to say that humanity knows more about Alpha Centauri than we know about whether your old man fucked you up.

But we know more than we used to. And here’s what the data says: fatherhood is a silly word used to market a ridiculous idea. Fatherhood implies that having a kid automatically offers men access to an altered state of being. It really doesn’t.

Want to know what will happen to you in the moment your child is born? Not much. As birth releases an oxytocin flood to your wife’s brain, overwhelming her with feelings of love so profound she ugly cries into low-thread-count hospital sheets, you may very well be tempted to check the Browns’ score (spoiler: they’re losing). You may feel this runs counter to the favored sentimental and celebrity narrative—the first time I saw that face, my whole world changed!—but birth experiences are as unique and varied as the men who have them. Instant love may be the story, but it’s not necessarily the norm.

So, when does Mom pass Dad the oxytocin? When she passes the baby. Men receive the biological benefits of dad-status only when they start taking care of their kids. Odd as it may sound, those initial dirty diapers become a gateway drug to care. You’ll want more. But only if you keep doing it. And it goes on like that forever: kid and Dad passing the good feelings back and forth like a joint until, if all goes well, the former delivers the latter a heartfelt eulogy. But Dad has to start, because the kid’s hands are too small to roll one and because that’s the one thing that we absolutely know for sure, peer-review and all: whatever seriously good vibes are going to be have to start with you.

While your father might have known nothing, he was particularly in the dark about the things he did know—which was actually a lot. He was pretty much parenting all the time. And surprise, surprise, most of the time, he was probably doing fine. Roughhousing was parenting; watching television with you was parenting; talking to your mother at the dinner table was parenting. Fatherhood is only a state of being in that it’s the act of being who you are. Because the fact is that the person you are before you have a kid will not be appreciably different than the person you are after you have a kid. And that person is the template your kid will use to learn how to live in the world. So becoming a good father is about knowing yourself and leveraging all that’s good in you toward raising someone who knows better than you. That’s love.

But love isn’t always easy, and loving as a parent can be even harder. It’s easy for the bad times (and there will be bad times) to eclipse the wonder that is raising another human. It’s not for nothing that some dads go out for a pack of cigarettes and decide not to come back. Some men let the hard times lie to them. Some men fall into the trap of thinking parenthood will always be tough and they will never be tougher.

You get maybe eighteen good years to lean into being a truly active and effective father. If you’re lucky, your relationship with your kid will continue to bloom into their adulthood and your own old age. If you’re really lucky, you get to see how they turned out.

Those eighteen years, though. They go by fast. And if you get lost in the tough times you miss the profound beauty of your kid becoming a person. You’ll look up one day and there will be a man or a woman standing in front of you and you’ll think, What the hell just happened?

That inkling that you have? That inkling that your father had? There’s no great secret in turning it into fatherly knowledge. All you have to do is be present. All you have to do is stop sometimes and observe a supposedly mundane moment. Because none of them are truly mundane—each one contains a look exchanged, a moment of communication, or a physical touch that is laying the foundation for your child’s personhood.

This book is about helping you create, recognize, and acknowledge those moments. And that your holding it in your hands is a damn good sign that you’re on the right track. Don’t sweat what you don’t know, because if you know yourself, you know fatherhood.

SECTION I

PREGAMING

In the best-case scenario, expecting parents have a full nine months to get ready for a kid. But instead of building a nursery, the best parents-to-be build an emotional foundation to be great parents and solid partners.

CHAPTER 1

Life-Life Balance

It’s morning on a workday. Your baby is awake, which means you’re probably awake as well—far too early. And because babies aren’t born with a snooze button, you’ll be staying awake. You stare at the ceiling for a moment, relishing the last bit of cozy comfort, maybe playing a game of who’ll-get-the-baby chicken with your partner. But you can’t stay in bed. Might as well get some coffee in your system and get on with it.

You’ve shaken away the dim edges of sleep, stretched, and held your kid for some morning cuddles. Literally nothing could be better than your child. And yet, the world pulls you away.

As you prepare for your day, you find yourself caught in the liminal space between being at home and being at work. Your body is making breakfast, but your mind flits between home responsibilities and work concerns, be it deadlines, projects, or quotas. The milk sloshes in the cereal bowl; your partner coos to the baby; you worry about all those TPS reports and how much vacation time you have left.

A working dad’s morning (whatever time of day it occurs) is one of the daily pivot points between work and life. It’s a time where the balance, or lack of balance, can be most keenly felt. It’s evident in the pang of guilt and worry while getting a kid ready for day care or preschool. It’s evident in a partner’s exhausted expression. It’s evident in the gratitude that there is work to go to at all.

These pivot points bring a parental truth into focus. As undeniably incredible and transformative having a child is, a new kid can make relationships more difficult. For all of the wonder and love and goodness kids bring to your life, the fact of their birth can create relationship conflict: with your work, your partner, and counterintuitively, with the kids themselves.

MAKING IT. WORK.

Financially speaking, kids are like cement water wings, making it much harder to stay afloat. The fun folks at the US Department of Agriculture (yep, the cabbage-yield people) calculate that the average American family spends $12,980 per year per child.¹ Practically speaking, that means new fathers are more dependent on their employers at precisely the moment when they have fewer extra hours to offer. As such, the postbaby struggle to balance professional and personal obligations can feel like a government appropriations process: it’s confusing, rules are involved, and any compromise breeds contempt on both sides of the aisle.

Determining the rules of your new existence as a father—what it means to be a father at work and at home—isn’t particularly easy. But as with all things, management, tactics, and goal-setting are key. Sure, the exercise of sitting in a room and ranking one’s priorities can feel ridiculous, but it’s worthwhile. Fatherhood changes a person, and you have to come to grips with that. In management-speak, you’re the only one to onboard the new guy.

Becoming a father doesn’t fundamentally change the underlying mechanics of balancing home life and work life, but it does shift the fulcrum, destabilizing the whole system. You may be able to exert the proper pressure to get things back on the level, but you will likely never achieve long-term equilibrium. Raising a kid is a dynamic process. Birth is just the first of many seismic shifts that will mess up whatever balance you think you’ve achieved. Still, it’s a place to start.

Understand that balancing your family life and your work life isn’t a one-and-done proposition. It’s a long and evolving process. Starting that process in the proper headspace and being proactive and thoughtful about the discussions you have, the stands you take, and the concessions you make in the run-up to the birth of your child can set a good precedent for both you and your employer. But instability will inevitably become the status quo, so the best bet is to get strong sea legs early on. In this case, that means figuring out your personal goals and getting into a tactical mindset.

Here’s something you’re going to notice during these preliminary conversations with your manager: you’re in a crap bargaining position. Parenthood requires that employees ask their employers for more—more understanding, more access to benefits (which shouldn’t be a problem but often is), and more flexibility—at exactly the moment when they need a job the most. Expecting dads and new dads who sense this dynamic but don’t address it directly wind up playing well-intentioned defense. For instance, many new fathers refuse to ask for flextime arrangements. According to a 2013 study, nearly 70 percent of fathers engage in informal flextime, but only 10 percent formalize those arrangements. That leaves many practicing the art of passing—a term McMaster University researcher Erin Reid coined to describe the act of cheating on your employer with your family (think: pretending a call with your wife was business related).² This is both understandable and avoidable.

Here’s how to avoid it. Try not writing scripts in which your child plays the villain, you play the hero, and your work plays the damsel in distress. Own the fact—verbally, to your employer—that you plan to put your kid first. When in doubt, treat conflicts like car accidents. Don’t apologize.

THE TRUTH ABOUT PATERNITY LEAVE

Barring a national paternal leave policy, fathers are largely reliant on a patchwork of state laws that may or may not allow them paid time at home in the first weeks of their child’s life. Currently, that patchwork of laws isn’t the greatest. Five states currently mandate paid parental leave. New York State, California, New Jersey, Rhode Island, Washington State, and Washington, DC, now have laws in place requiring employers to provide paid leave to employees. Leave amounts run from four to twelve weeks and cover anywhere from 60 to 90 percent of wages, depending on the hours a parent works.

Any other leave a parent might receive comes at the discretion of an employer. The best businesses recognize the benefit of allowing a family time to establish long-term care patterns and bonding. They’ll offer three months of leave to both parents. The worst companies allow paltry leave or offer it only to mothers, often considered the primary caregiver. And it will remain this way until laws change.

But laws and policies are only half the battle. Office culture can be toxic even when managers are not. According to Ferne Traeger, a psychotherapist who specializes in helping individuals and corporations navigate major transitions, this should give new parents pause.

Frequently, managers are not even aware of their biases. They think they actually get it, but they don’t, Traeger says. The undercurrents of workplace culture can have a tremendous effect on how fathers feel about taking time off.³ So recognize this and differentiate between your employer (the company) and your employer (the human in charge of you). Your workplace has an agenda, and that agenda is for you to work more.

Need more freedom? Ask for it. And keep discussions with your manager focused on your work deliverables and due dates.

Ultimately, good managers care about results more than keeping asses in seats. If you have a bad manager, think about moving on. Intervene on your own behalf. It behooves even happily employed expecting and new fathers to shore up their professional networks and discuss new opportunities. Taking an aggressive negotiating stance may be unwise; emailing that guy Phil you met at the conference in Tampa is not. Sure, Phil may have halitosis, but he knows people who know people. Unlikely as it may sound, Phil is a hero. Phil is the smelly guy who helps you calm down.

THE PATERNITY BONUS

Now we’re calm, which means that it’s time to prepare for the long haul. Happily for you, fatherhood does not represent a long-term professional liability. To the contrary!

According to a study conducted by Boston College researchers in 2016, some 97 percent of fathers see job security as important or extremely important.⁴ Employers tend to understand this (implicitly if not explicitly) and assign value to the perceived loyalty and consistency of their working dads. A seminal 2014 study by sociologist Michelle Budig found that American employers consistently described fathers as committed employees with more skin in the game than their coworkers. And that’s not the best part. The best part is that Budig found men’s earnings increase on average more than 6 percent when they have a child.⁵ This Fatherhood Bonus explains the statistical discrepancy between the average earnings of dads and non-dads, which are unequal even when adjusted to account for employee age. Whether employers are smart to count on dads or just culturally biased in their favor is an interesting academic discussion—for other people.

For fathers, the key takeaway is to ask for more money within the first year. Even if a raise isn’t forthcoming, it will make your manager reconsider your compensation, and the evidence suggests that will likely end well.

The best defense is, to twist the saying, a good offense. Fathers often forget this because they feel like they are underperforming in the office or at home. That’s fine, but it’s important to practice a bit of compensation pattern recognition and take advantage of the privileges life throws at you.

Work inevitably feels different for a new dad than for a non-dad. Time away from the home—whether for business trips or happy hour drinks—is now subject to negotiation with both your boss and your spouse. This is the new normal, and it dictates that you will miss out on some things workwise. There will be happy hour drinks undrank, LinkedIns unlinked, and meetings unmet.

Commitments have a cost, and no one gets to have it all (except Dwayne The Rock Johnson, for some reason). You might become the guy who declines all meetings at 5:00 p.m. You might have to send a colleague on a trip you’d like to go on. You might have to delegate or let things slide a bit more than you’d like. The key is to decide what concessions you plan to make, then stick with the plan. Otherwise, you’ll have to get used to living not just with kids but with disappointment too.

PARTNER-LIFE BALANCE

Since the mid-twentieth century, the number of two-income families has skyrocketed. Currently, just over half of American fathers have working partners.⁶ That said, the pursuit of work balance isn’t just about financial stability and scheduling—it’s about allowing partners to pursue their own growth.

On a fundamental level, everyone is comparing the home life they’re building to a model family. And model families—like actual models—are often unrealistically proportioned. Many, if not most, men believe not only that they will be primary breadwinners but that they should be. They believe this despite being avowed feminists, and their wives may believe it too (the dynamic is slightly different in gay couples, who make more than straight couples). In the wake of a child being born, more mothers than fathers reduce their hours, take significant time off, or quit their jobs entirely, which is fine as long as they’re not being pressured into it. But assumptions can and do often make the proverbial ass out of everyone involved.

For example: think it’s the fault of hardworking people when they go broke? Think again. Home economics matter, but macroeconomics are just as (if not more) important.

Imagine this: day care calls and your kid is running a slight fever. Both you and your wife have super important afternoon meetings. Who buckles first and sends the text Childcare emergency. Can we re-sked? It’s remarkably easy to default to making these sorts of things into mommy problems. And you’d better believe that day care providers and teachers will make it even easier by calling mom first. But unless that’s the deal that’s proactively been struck, it’s likely to foment resentment because such gender role play is utterly unequal. That’s why it’s better to get ahead of it. Have an on-call schedule or at least an explicit understanding. This matters not only because relationships are key but because two successful parents are better than one, and mothers are fighting an uphill battle against workplace bias. A little bit of overcompensation—say, picking up the kid three times a week—is more than just an act of love. It’s a smart investment.

And if that’s not enough incentive, consider that Stew Friedman of the Wharton Work/Life Integration Project has conclusively demonstrated that children benefit when their mothers feel empowered at work—more so than when their fathers do.⁷ So, to the extent that you can support your spouse’s professional advancement (and the entailing control), know that the benefits aren’t all arriving via direct deposit. Remember that work isn’t just your work.

KID-LIFE BALANCE

Though it’s tempting for new parents to focus on the impact of family life on work—after all, an addition to the family is what changed everything—the impact of work on family life is generally more keenly and negatively felt. So the question of how work affects your home life, and the ways in which you’re likely to let it, is much more profound than its inverse.

The long-term danger faced by working fathers is falling into what Brad Harrington, executive director of the Boston College Center for Work & Family, calls the conflicted father role. Harrington divides modern fathers—baby boomers, Gen Xers, and millennials—into three types: egalitarian, conflicted, and traditional. (Surprisingly, the distribution is relatively constant intergenerationally.) The too long/didn’t read version goes like this:

Traditional fathers feel their wives should take the lead on childcare, and they do. (It’s worth noting these are mostly straight guys, so wives is the right word.) Most traditional fathers—roughly 60 percent—are sole breadwinners.

Egalitarian fathers think they should share caregiving equally with their partners and do. Most egalitarian fathers—over 60 percent—are not sole breadwinners.

Conflicted fathers believe they should share caregiving equally with their partners and don’t. Most conflicted fathers—a lot more than 60 percent—are miserable.

Conflicted fathers wanted to climb the corporate ladder but at the same time wanted to spend more time with their children, Harrington explains. Conflicted fathers asserted that their children’s interests were their top priority but were highly susceptible to the work demands of their corporate cultures.⁸

The takeaway? There’s no ideal equation for a balanced life—being woke doesn’t change that—but there is a perfect formula for unhappiness: hypocrisy. Men who want to put their kids first but don’t wind up suffering for their sins. The consequences are very real and keenly felt.

And sometimes those consequences aren’t just felt by Dad.

Children were more likely to show behavioral problems if their fathers were overly involved psychologically in their careers. This tends to occur when overinvolvement manifests itself as what Stewart Friedman calls cognitive interference. The most common form of cognitive interference? Techno-interference.⁹ This is what is known in common parlance as failing to put down the fucking phone.

It’s easy to conflate being at home with being present at home, but these two things are growing ever more distinct. As the cubicular nine-to-five gives way to a nebulous 24/7—Unlimited vacation days! Work from home! Flex-time! Why didn’t you answer the phone?!—the desire to be present at home has in many cases transformed into an unwitting obligation to be available for work all the time. We live in an era of the bedtime Slack ping. And that’s bad news for children, who can tell the difference between present and accounted for (infants, it’s worth noting, cannot, so you’ve got about ten months of cushion). In other words, you can take the work out of the office, but you can’t take the office out of the worker—that is, unless you realize that when you walk through your door, you are no longer a man with a title. To them, you are just Dad.

Interestingly—and actually this may change your life and ease your suffering—Friedman and his coauthor Jeffrey Greenhaus have proven that cognitive interference is more harmful to children than a dad spending extended hours at work.

Children of fathers who work long hours and then clock out tend to fare better than children of fathers who go home but keep checking their email. So, finish what you’re doing, then move on.

The truth is, work can be alluring—a siren song calling you from the adult world to drop the blocks and see what your peers are up to. The truth is, you might always have best intentions and love in your heart for your child, but you will also have your phone in your pocket. And from that phone there will issue beeps and boops just as from your child will issue pees and poops, squeals and peals and cries. Your baby doesn’t have a touch screen. It’s not that interactive. There are no games on it. At times, this baby will be very boring. And then, the temptation to dance alone to the rhythm of work—the comforting patter of emails, the ping of texts, and the timpani of subscription-based time-management software—is real. Bear down and deal with being present for your kid.

YOU-LIFE BALANCE

We started off the chapter talking about the seesaw of work-life balance. And it would be naive not to acknowledge the competing demands of both home and work. But here’s the buried lede: balance isn’t . . . real. The human resources phrase work-life balance contains a logical fallacy. (Never trust anyone who has to have human in their job title to seem relatable.) The dash implies an opposition that simply isn’t possible. In truth, it’s all part of the same experience. There is no zero-sum game. Spending time with your kids may make you a better employee. Working will likely make you a better father. Understanding is not a finite resource. It’s a habit.

It’s also something you owe yourself.

You made a decision by having a child and choosing to be in that child’s life. That decision affected your work life. And the subsequent decisions you make at work will affect that child’s life. Every day you will make the decision to return home from work instead of going out to buy a pack of cigarettes, heading to the bar with the guys, and . . . that’s a decision, as well. And these are mostly if not all decisions based on love, which is far more stable than anything your boss can offer and far more worth it than any annual bonus.

CHAPTER 2

Nine Months, Six Conversations

In the lead-up to the birth of a child—specifically a first child—many parents focus on their health, the hospital, and readying their home. This translates to countless doctor appointments, carefully wrought birth plans, and, most obviously, a whole lot of stuff—all those cribs and strollers and binkies. No matter how valuable, stuff matters less than values. What babies need, more than even a place to poop and sleep, is an emotionally stable environment. And if that sounds easy to provide, rest assured it isn’t. Babies are, after all, a profoundly destabilizing force.

Many happily married couples assume that the love that brought them together will organically and naturally create a healthy environment for their children. This is demonstrably untrue. As Ian Curtis so presciently moaned, Love, love will tear us apart. The difference between mutual love and shared love is, as anyone who ever watched their crush dance with someone else well knows, that shared love can exist in opposition.

Couples are usually unprepared for the stress and struggle that descends with a newborn. So there’s good reason why University of Wisconsin sociologist E. E. LeMasters called birth a crisis for marriage.¹

From 2005 to 2011, researchers at the University of California, Berkeley documented the experience of one hundred couples experiencing new parenthood, including during the transition from late pregnancy to birth with regular follow-ups into the grade school years. They found that nearly a third of these couples experienced clinical ranges of distress in their marriages within a year of the birth of their first child.² This means that simply by becoming a parent, men and women could experience diagnosable depression, anxiety, and stress.

A similar 2009 study followed 216 couples over the first eight years of marriage and measured how the birth of a child changed the functional quality of their relationships. Researchers found that the birth of a child was linked to a distinct and sudden drop in relationship satisfaction compared to couples who remained childless.

Drops in relationship satisfaction were strongly correlated with uneven or mismatched expectations—not values, but actual expectations—about what life after a baby would be like: who will be changing diapers, when are we returning to work, who is doing night feedings?

A 2002 study by UNC Greensboro researcher Marion O’Brien drilled down on this dynamic, finding that husbands who held more traditional attitudes regarding child-rearing and those whose beliefs about child-rearing differed from their partners saw the steepest declines in intimacy—meaning, in this case, less companionship and sex. This isn’t just a dad problem; two-thirds of mothers experience a decline in marital satisfaction as well.³

But the significant and growing body of research on relationship outcomes does